BROWSING: AT&T

ORLANDO, Florida, United States—Following on a meeting of operators and vendors with an interest in Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution (EDGE) technology at the 3GSM World Congress in France last month, the EDGE Operators Forum officially formed and met in Orlando in March...

NEW YORK—Standard & Poor's Corp. lowered the speculative-grade ratings of American Cellular Corp. to CCC-plus from B because the company's annual report indicated it is likely to exceed the debt leverage limits required by its bank loan covenants."According to management and the auditors, if...

MobileSpring Inc. and InphoMatch Inc., rival vendors for short message service interoperability solutions, have been working together during the past few months to ensure their cross-carrier messaging systems are themselves interoperable.The teaming comes as no real surprise. By making sure their systems can work...

WASHINGTON—A class-action antitrust lawsuit filed against the mobile-phone industry in early January and promptly withdrawn two weeks later is expected to be refiled today in Manhattan federal court, according to a lawyer familiar with the case. The lead plaintiff in the new...

BOGOTA, Colombia—3G Americas, the recently announced trade organization that will advocate TDMA, GSM, GPRS, EDGE and UMTS technologies, launched Spanish and Portuguese Web sites at www.3gamericas.orgFounding members of the group include Telecom Personal in Argentina, U.S. operators AT&T Wireless and Cingular Wireless, Canadian operator...

LA JOLLA, Calif.—Consumer cell phone service rates have fallen to about 10 cents per anytime minute over the past six months, according to a recent study by ARS Inc.The study showed that overall per-minute fees for all plans decreased 13 percent from about 11.68...

SAN DIEGO—Leap Wireless International Inc. signed a definitive agreement with AT&T Wireless PCS L.L.C. to exchange six licenses in Lakeland, Fla., and portions of other spectrum in Pueblo, Colo., and Salem, Ore., covering 1.6 million potential customers in five states for a 10-megahertz license...

TORONTO—Canada's four national wireless carriers launched commercial availability of inter-carrier mobile text messaging. The four operators, Bell Mobility, Microcell PCS, Rogers AT&T Wireless and Telus Mobility, are all using technology from CMG Wireless Data Solutions.Each carrier will route out-of-network short message service messages to...

TORONTO—Canadians are not getting too excited about the possibilities for short message service (SMS), according to a report released by the Yankee Group in Canada. Its research claims only 5 percent of Canadian cellular users are very interested in SMS, while 42 percent have...

TOKYO—NTT DoCoMo, the leading mobile carrier in Japan, is reportedly going to post a 1 trillion yen (US$7.5 billion) special loss in its fiscal 2001 financial results mainly from an evaluation loss from its overseas investments. Due to the huge special loss, NTT DoCoMo...

KINGSTON, Jamaica—A fourth cellular operator is expected to enter the Jamaica market on 1 March, 2003.The Jamaican government announced plans to award a license for mobile communications, saying the market is far from saturated. Centennial Digital last October joined the Irish company Digicel and...

WATERLOO, Ontario—The BlackBerry is going to Asia under a deal between the maker of the wireless e-mail and mobile-phone device, Research In Motion Ltd., and Hong Kong wireless carrier Hutchison Telecommunications.Hutchison Telecom, which sports 1.7 million customers, will sell the device running over its...

RESTON, Va.—America Online Inc., continuing its wireless strategy of partnering with carriers to distribute its content, announced a deal with Nextel Communications Inc. to offer its popular AOL instant messaging and e-mail programs over Nextel's packet-data network.AOL has signed content agreements with numerous wireless...

ORLANDO—Sierra Wireless announced at this week's CTIA Wireless 2002 show that it will provide Rogers AT&T Wireless with the AirCard 750 GSM/GPRS PC Card.Now with the AirCard 750, wireless device users in Canada can wirelessly access the Internet, intranets, corporate applications and e-mail at...

HELSINKI, Finland—Nokia and AT&T Wireless said they have completed their joint MoU to develop and test advanced enhancements supporting the evolution of an All-IP network."The finalization of this agreement validates the use of All-IP technologies with EDGE and UMTS to ensure that advanced multimedia...

ORLANDO—AT&T Wireless made several announcements to bolster its presence at CTIA Wireless 2002.The carrier announced it will install Adaptive Multirate Vocorder (AMR) technology that could more than double the voice capacity on its GSM network. In addition, AT&T Wireless said it will begin selling...

KANSAS CITY, Mo.—Sprint PCS said it plans to introduce an Intercarrier Messaging feature of its Sprint PCS Short Mail service, allowing customers to send and receive messages from customers of other service providers. Sprint PCS said the ability for other carriers' customers to respond...

BELLEVUE, Washington, United States—3G Americas, a new trade organization representing five principal wireless technologies in the Americas, launched to help unify the U.S. wireless industry.GSM, TDMA, GPRS, EDGE and UMTS carriers and vendors will collaborate on regulatory and technical issues. Chris Pearson, former executive...

NORTH HOLLYWOOD, Calif.—Qualcomm's BREW platform scored another major developer deal, this time with Walt Disney and its ESPN-branded sports games.Under the deal, Walt Disney Internet Group said it will develop games like ESPN's 2-Minute Drill for the Qualcomm platform. Verizon Wireless recently announced its...

REDMOND, Wash.—AT&T Wireless updated its guidance for this year following the recently completed acquisition of former affiliate TeleCorp PCS.The nation's third-largest wireless operator said it expects mid-teen-percentage growth in service revenue for the year with TeleCorp, up from its previous guidance of low double-digit...

BELLEVUE, Wash.—VoiceStream Wireless now offers inter-carrier text messaging to all its subscribers, regardless of handset type or service plan, the company announced.VoiceStream is using InphoMatch Inc.'s InphoXchange technology platform. VoiceStream follows AT&T Wireless Services Inc. and Cingular Wireless in making it possible for wireless...

SALT LAKE CITY—During the recently completed Winter Olympics, AT&T Wireless said its network handled 9.6 million calls from the venues where the athletes competed, averaging more than 500,000 calls daily. The call volume was nearly three time more than the same period last year...

Global interest in the U.S. cellular market is high. And with consolidation expected in the United States and around the world in coming months, U.S. carriers that are owned by foreign companies could be impacted by their partners’ interests and strategies around the globe.The...

CANNES, France—The mobile industry put on a brave face last week at the annual 3GSM World Congress here, with few signs of the financial downturn the industry is currently enduring showing through to the exhibition halls or the company-rented yachts that line the harbor...